Pandora is an open source handheld device which is being aimed to become the most powerful one till date in both Raw CPU power and 3D Graphics. Pandora is basically an ultra portable device with a gaming console aimed to conquer the gaming market from aging GP2X.

This gaming console is built from the scratch as an OS with a Linux distro. It is the same size as the Nintendo DS and the company comments on its strange design, that it provides better resistance, better battery space and easy handling.

Design Specifications:

• Substantial color LCD touch screen
• Dual analog joy pads
• Digital D-pad
• A-B-X-Y buttons
• QWERTY keyboard just for kicks

Internal Specifications:

• ARM® Cortex™-A8 CPU running Linux
• 800×480 4.3″ 16.7 million color touch screen LCD
• OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
• Dual SDHC card slots
• Dual analog and digital gaming controls
• 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
• TV output
• High Speed USB Host

With the Pandora priced at $330, some gamers consider it to be the new king-pin but it is yet to be seen how the open source device captures the gaming community.

Pandora preview

The full text chat messages sent through the Skype chat client are regularly scanned for sensitive keywords relating to the government and if found, these messages with the personal details of the sender are stored on a insecure publicly-accessible server breaching the security principles. That’s how the researchers were able to download and analyze copies of the surveillance data because the Chinese computers were improperly configured, leaving them accessible.

The search criteria based upon which the messages are monitored include words related to the religious group Falun Gong, Taiwan independence and the Chinese Communist Party. It includes not only words like democracy, but also earthquake and milk powder. (Chinese officials are facing criticism over the handling of earthquake relief and chemicals tainting milk powder.)

When questioned about the monitoring of chat messages of users and the extent of support TOM-Skype was extending to the Chinese government, Skype says, “As part of the joint venture, TOM provides guidance to Skype about how to co-operate with local laws and regulations in China. In every country we operate in, we always work with local authorities to follow local laws and best practice.”

“TOM operates a text filter in TOM-Skype. The filter operates solely on text chats. The filter has a list of words which will not be displayed in Skype chats. The text filter operates on the chat message content before it is encrypted for transmission, or after it has been decrypted on the receiver side. If the message is found unsuitable for displaying, it is simply discarded and not displayed or transmitted anywhere.”

Skype also mentioned that:

• The text filter does not affect in any way the security and encryption mechanisms of Skype.
• Full end-to-end security is preserved and there is no compromise of people’s privacy.
• Calls, chats and all other forms of communication on Skype continue to be encrypted and secure.
• There is absolutely no filtering on voice communications.

Comparing them head to head:

With Nokia’s Tube matching and excelling the features of the IPhone in the comparison, experts say that the sales of the Tube would depend upon the price of the phone which would decide result of the war. But I would say the war has just begun. With Blackberry’s touch phone which is to be released in early Jan and advanced version of the 3G iPhone still in the pipe, the touch market is still seeing its dawn.

Nokia Tube featured in The Dark Knight

Apple: Got the name because the founder, Steve Jobs apparently worked in an apple orchard before setting up this company. Beatles’ record album –‘Apple’ was also his favorite.

Red hat: Got its name because Marc Erwing, who distributed Linux first had received a red hat from his grandfather as a gift, but lost it by the time he wrote the beta version of his Linux.

Yahoo: When David Filo and Jerry Yang came up with their search engine they decided to name it Yahoo because they considered themselves yahoos. Yahoo basically means a person with low hygiene quotient!

Hp: Founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed the coin to decide whether it should be called Hewlett Packard or Packard Hewlett. If luck was otherwise you would have gone to buy PH Printers (The name sounds so strange!).

Motorola: The Company first made car audio systems and founder Paul Galvin named it Motorola because it was a trend those days to join ‘Ola’ at the end of the name. The company was later taken over but the name did not change.

Virgin: Strange it may seem and many hope that the name would mean something else. But no, Richard Branson named it so because when they first started, everyone on-board were actually virgins!

Nokia: The name is actually not the daughter’s name of a Japanese developer, but the name of the small town in Finland where the company was founded.

Wipro: Many people know this. Wipro was initially was into sunflower oil and 747 laundry soap business run by Azim Premji’s father who called it Wipro which stands for Western India Vegetable Products Limited.

Exadata

The company claims that the storage server was designed to push data more quickly to the databases by pairing Intel multicore processors with memory. The Exadata Storage Server includes a dozen disk drives and two quad-core Intel processors that are used to perform database query operations on the storage equipment itself. This would increase the performance by ten fold, Oracle claims.

The Linux version of the Database Machine would be available immediately but support for other operating systems is yet to come. The Exadata Storage Server will work with “any Oracle database server” meaning existing customers using older versions of oracle do not have to migrate to the new version of Oracle software.

Joking about the storage capacity, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison quipped, “This is 1,400 times larger than Apple’s largest iPod.”

The Database Machine is priced at $4,000 per terabyte of storage, plus the database license cost, Oracle said. The systems can be ordered from Oracle, which will be responsible for sales and support. HP will handle the delivery and servicing of the hardware.

Larry Ellison Open World conference video

G1 features a wide touchscreen, a 3-megapixel camera and a slide out QWERTY keyboard. The G1, which runs on T-Mobile’s 3G and EDGE networks as well as WiFi, also includes a trackball and a music player. Google has loaded the device with several new applications, such as Google Maps with Street View. The map service enables users to instantly view maps and satellite imagery as well as locate local businesses and access driving directions.

Other applications on the G1 include a rich HTML e-mail client capable of syncing Gmail, calendar and contacts as well as most other POP3 or IMAP e-mail services. The device also supports instant messaging in the form of Google Talk, as well as AOL, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. Also included is built-in support for YouTube. Like iTunes for the iPhone, G1 is loaded with a new application from Amazon.com that accesses the e-tail giant’s media store that will enable users to purchase music.

The iPhone and the G1 take different approaches to storage. Apple offers both an 8 GB and a 16 GB iPhone. The G1, on the other hand, comes pre-installed with a 1 GB MicroSD memory card. Users can buy additional memory cards (the device supports cards up to 8 GB) and interchange them.

Among the flip side factors for the android phone are that, although the G1 includes a music player, it does not offer a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. In order to listen through standard headphones, users will have to buy an adapter. Although the device can read documents created in Word, Excel or PowerPoint, the handset does not support Microsoft.

G1 obviously does not use the elegant gestures as the iPhone. People who were expecting G1 to be flashy and better than iphone in all respects have to wait until the Google phone matures. There are a lot of things that the G1 does not have but this is just the first generation. Google have the reputation of filling the gaps fast so we have to wait and watch how the Google – android phone iterates.

In the U.S., the G1 handset will be available in black, white and brown at select T-Mobile retail stores and online on Oct. 22, priced at US$179 with a two-year voice and data agreement. The G1 will also be available in the United Kingdom beginning in November and in select European markets during the first quarter of 2009. The rest of the world will have to wait a little longer.

G1 video
Sneak Peak of Android apps

If everything goes as planned by ISRO, any of the days from October 19th to 28th would be remembered as a red-letter day for us Indians. Our very first, homespun lunar probe, Chandrayaan is all set to make its first voyage to the Moon on these tentative dates depending on the weather conditions. The mission if successful will put India into the elite club of countries who have been able to perform missions to the moon. If the weather plays spoil sport, the mission may be postponed to December.

Chandrayaan is still undergoing some tests which will simulate the conditions that the probe will undergo at the time of launch such as high-temperatures, vibrations during take off and the vibration – acoustic test.

Chandrayaan will carry 11 payloads totally consisting, 5 from India, 3 from the European Space Agency (ESA), one from the Bulgarian Space Agency (BSA) and 2 from NASA, making it a truly global initiative. The two-year mission will be invaluable as the Chandrayaan is programmed to orbit the lunar surface and digitally map it. One of its objectives is also to send information on the traces of the composition of the lunar surface apart from looking for atomic minerals such as thorium and uranium. The probe is also gearing up high-resolution cameras which could help it to comment upon the existence of water on the moon.

An upgraded version of the most successful launch vehicle for ISRO, the PSLV launch vehicle will be used to transport the probe to the lunar orbit. The vehicle holds the record for sending as many as 10 satellites simultaneously during its last mission. This time round, it is all set to break its own record by carrying 11 different payloads.

From using a bicycle as their first rocket transporter during its initial stages in 1963, the Indian space program has covered many miles to attempt to join the elite club of successful moon missions. When successful it will definitely be another feather in India’s success hat.

Chandrayaan

Go India!

]]> http://teknovelo.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/india-moon/feed/ 2 teknovelo Chandrayaan http://teknovelo.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/picasa-unleashed/ http://teknovelo.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/picasa-unleashed/#comments Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:46:13 +0000 teknovelo http://teknovelo.wordpress.com/?p=69 Continue reading →]]> Photo sharing has stepped into a new era with Google releasing the new version of Picasa. Picasa, a photo sharing and editing software has improved enormously since acquired. The new version of Picasa looks promising with loads of features which could make photo meddling a lot easier and interesting.

Picasa makes big news by including a new feature which I would call it a blockbuster, which allows its users to assign ‘name tags’ to individuals captured in images. If you assign name tags to a few faces in your collection, Picasa Web Albums will help you automatically find other photos with the same people so you can quickly tag your whole collection. That way, users can easily make an album of any person present in their collections.

Picasa also has the ability to automatically sync albums from a PC to the web, ensuring images and albums can be added, deleted or edited both online and locally at the same time. Picasa web albums can also be shared with anyone without any registration or accounts. It provides a full resolution view of the photos once an album is shared.

A new ‘Explore’ section gives users a way to enjoy photos published by other Google Photos users around the world, including a ‘Where in the World’ game in which you guess the mystery locales of geo-tagged photos.

Users will also benefit from the addition of new photo editing tools such as:

• A drag-and-drop photo-collage tool giving total freedom over layout and content
• A powerful retouching brush to wipe out scratches and blemishes, and repair old photos.
• A slideshow movie maker that uploads to YouTube with a click
• Auto red-eye removal
• Smart auto-cropping that guides you on how to zoom in on your subject
• A fast-launching Photo Viewer to quickly inspect and manipulate images while in the Windows filesystem

Watch Picasa Video
Download picasa

Windows 7 is a project on which Microsoft have been working on for 3 years now. With a changed vision that Microsoft doesn’t want to make big changes to its OS after release they seem gearing up for something big.

Features:

While people believed that Microsoft was rectifying the numerous issues of vista, they were caught by surprise by the news about Vienna. Microsoft is backing up Vienna big time considering its wish list users have reported. Some of the best on the list are: (the last one being my favorite)

• Integrated font manager
• Network tray – ‘currently connected to’ with context menus
• Recycle bin should ‘fill up’ visually
• IE should have a close button on each tab
• Drag tabs from one instance of IE to another
• Windows should not need to spin up the cd drive every time you pull down the drive list
• Image (ISO, BIN) support in Windows
• Virtual Desktop Feature
• Multiple taskbars for multiple monitors
• Integrated anti-virus
• Replace error ID number with plain language explanation

The complete wish list is available in the snap below. There is no way that Microsoft could complete the whole of the wish list but we could expect something out of the new OS. Gates at a conference in Tokyo said the key aspects of Windows 7 will be “the ability to be lower power, take less memory, be more efficient, and have lots more connections up to the mobile phone.”

Performance:

Controversial topics are always difficult to handle but a shot once in a while is a risk to be taken. Talking about Vienna’s performance, it takes a different approach to the componentization and backwards compatibility issues by not thinking about them at all. Windows 7 will be a from-the-ground-up packaging of the Windows code base. Making the break from backwards compatibility is a dangerous proposal but a dream for software developers. Performance of native applications can be increased, distribution sizes can be cut down, functionality can be added without the worry of breaking old applications, and the overall end-user experience can be significantly improved.

Release:

In January 2008 Microsoft when asked about Windows 7 said that it was still in developmental stage and would take 3 years of coding. But it has raised many eyebrows, when a source from InternetNews.com said that an internal calendar at Microsoft has June 3, 2009 as the planned release date for Vienna. The Beta 1 version is said to be available in mid-December. Whether Microsoft can release on June 3^rd or it is one of those dates our managers deadline us with, is to be seen.

Windows 7 Official video – Featuring touch

Keep yourself updated with Windows 7 with this anonymous blogger supposedly a windows 7 developer at http://shippingseven.blogspot.com/

Windows 7 wish list:

Hackers capitalize on the geek factor of Linux and there are no licensing restrictions or elaborate security programs backed by big R&D teams as it’s an anonymous community. In the Red Hat hacking issue, the intruders were able to sign some of the open shell script packages related Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

As a precaution, Red Hat released an updated version of those packages, a list of tampered packages and a script to check if any of the packages are installed on a user’s system.

“This is a significant issue and they have to work to address it,” says Jay Lyman, an open source analyst with The 451 Group. There were grumblings and rumors online and in discussion groups that internal systems may have been hacked, which indeed was the case, and was confirmed by Red Hat.

In their announcement, Red Hat said changing the Fedora signing keys could require “affirmative steps” from every Fedora system owner or administrator, and said, if needed, those steps would be made public. It also confirmed that there is little risk to Fedora users who wish to install or upgrade signed Fedora packages but it was issuing alert for those who may obtain Red Hat binary packages via channels other than those of official Red Hat subscribers.

The Fedora Project released its alpha code for Fedora 10, earlier this month. On the Red Hat side, the company issued an update and guidance on how users can protect themselves. The company said it was “highly confident” that the Red Hat Network, an internal system that makes updates and patches, was not compromised by the hacker.

Having my take on it, I would say the incident would have come to Red Hat as a shell shocker and they would take necessary steps that it would not happen again but on the other side, you may ever know!